A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(7)

“Hullo, Win,” she said amiably. Edwin thought about correcting her again. He discarded the idea before she took breath to add, “How’s Bel? I haven’t seen her in an age. The wedding? No, it must have been since then.”

“Bel’s doing fine. Anne, I’m here about Reggie.”

“What’s he done now?”

“Do you know where he is? He hasn’t been to work in a fortnight.”

“Work?” said Anne. “Oh, that’s right. Not to worry. Someone once told me you have to stand on a table in frilly drawers spouting outright treason before anyone can be bothered to fire you from government service. I’m sure he’ll get back to it when he’s bored enough.”

“So you haven’t heard from him? He’s not spent a single night in his rooms; I’ve checked.” A band of dull pain was forming around Edwin’s temples, and it tweaked itself tighter as a sudden muffled sound, like a ripple of music, intruded on the room from a nearby cabinet.

“That blasted clock,” said Anne, following his gaze. “I thought Dora was going to put it in the linen cupboard. If it weren’t a family heirloom I’d have tossed it out of an upstairs window by now.” She went and fished a large object, bundled in cloth, from the cabinet. It had stopped emitting music by the time it was unwrapped, and proved to be a handsome standing clock, the boxy casing a deep reddish wood and the face a mosaic of coloured nacre.

Anne said, “It kept perfect time until last month, when it turned whimsical. Now it announces the hour three times in an afternoon, or else four times in ten minutes.”

“Magical?” Edwin asked.

Anne nodded. “Doesn’t need winding, supposed to last for centuries. But nothing runs forever, I suppose. I asked Saul to look at it, but he didn’t want to prod for fear of breaking something. And there’s only one thaumhorologist in London, so of course the man charges a prince’s ransom.” She gave the clock a rueful look. “We’re hoping it runs out of power before we run out of things to wrap it in.”

“May I?” Edwin brought it over to the low table where the light was good. The back panel was imbued to click neatly open with a finger-stroke down the seam. The clock’s insides were still ticking; Edwin felt like a surgeon operating on a pair of breathing lungs. Cogs and gears were set around a polished sphere of what looked like more wood, held in a silver bracket. Hung on small hooks around the clock’s inner walls, like coats in a dollhouse, were a series of objects: a twist of dried grass, a silver ring with a triangular dent in it, a red ribbon, a broken grey chain link. Edwin didn’t touch anything. He watched the moving cogs for a little while, then replaced the back.

“I think it’s an oak-heart mechanism,” he said. “I’ve read about them. Properly treated oak will absorb a large amount of power and release it slowly, like wound-up springs. And you’re right, it won’t run forever. Someone needs to pour a lot more magic into the heart, that’s all. Like watering a plant, if the plant only needed water every hundred years.”

“That sounds simple.”

“It is and it isn’t. The imbuement still needs clear parameters. Most trained magicians with a certain level of power could do it. Do you have paper . . .?”

What looked like household accounts emerged from one of Anne’s skirt pockets, and she indicated the back of the page for his use.

“Saul’s your fiancé? English-trained?”

Anne nodded and Edwin wrote down a rough sheet of instructions for the man, making the annotation for the cradles very clear. His pen’s scribe imbuement responded only to voice. For the first time he wondered about how one would go about linking it to the actions of one’s hands. Or sound—could it take down music on a stave, as played aloud? There’d be limitations on speed and complexity, but perhaps— “Pity you can’t do it for us yourself,” said Anne.

Edwin’s hand paused. “Yes.” He finished the last lines: Take care to avoid the device’s other components when applying imbuement to the wood. This appears to be a delicately arranged system.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude. But surely you—”

“Yes.”

“In any case, this was easier than calling in some stuffy old expert!” said Anne. She looked at the paper. The annotations would mean as much to her as written Chinese, but any magician trained in the English system would be able to follow them. “What do we owe you for your services, Win?”

It was clearly a joke, but Edwin said, “Send me a note if you hear anything from Reggie. I’ve got rooms at the Cavendish.”

For the first time, Anne appeared to actually focus on Edwin’s face. She frowned. “Honestly, I’m sure it’s nothing. But let me ask Dora and Mama.”

She rang for a maid, who was dispatched to fetch the other members of Reggie’s family to the parlour. Both confirmed that neither of them had heard from him for over a month. Transparently, they didn’t find this unusual. Even more transparently, they were finding it an effort to dredge up any kind of real concern for his well-being.

The Gatlings were old magic—not as old as the Courceys, but old enough. The widowed Mrs. Gatling treated Edwin with the distant, pity-tainted politeness that one might use with ailing children, and the pity only thickened when she asked after Edwin’s own mother. The pleasant distraction of the clock having faded, Edwin was itching to leave. He escaped after writing down his address and extracting a renewed promise from Anne that she’d send on any news of her absent brother.